<?php
/**
 * <https://y.st./>
 * Copyright © 2017 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
 * 
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 * the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
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 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
 * GNU General Public License for more details.
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 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 * along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org./licenses/>.
**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Burnt at work',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<section id="general">
	<h2>General news</h2>
	<p>
		One of my shift leaders burnt my arm with a hot pizza pan today.
		Hilariously, this came after a joking threat that they&apos;d burn me because I&apos;d been hassling them.
		They felt really bad about it though.
		I&apos;d forgotten all about the joking threat, but they said that now that they actually burnt me, they felt like a jerk for even saying that they&apos;d do it.
		I thanked them for reminding me, saying that that needed to go in my journal for sure.
		I assured them that I don&apos;t use my coworkers&apos; names in my journal though for privacy reasons.
		They replied that they didn&apos;t care if I used their name; they&apos;d own up to it.
		When I made it clear that my journal is public though, they took it back.
		They didn&apos;t want to be publicly recorded.
		I&apos;m not sure if this was in general or in regards to the burn, but either way is the same to me; I&apos;ll only use someone&apos;s name in all cases or no cases.
		It&apos;s simply incoherent to sometimes talk about someone by name and other times not do that.
	</p>
	<p>
		My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="university">
	<h2>University life</h2>
	<p>
		I mostly finished my reading assignment and <a href="/en/coursework/PHIL1404/#Unit6">learning journal entry</a>, though sadly, I wasn&apos;t quite able to complete it entirely.
		I still have one chapter left to read.
		Before I got through what I did, I wrote up my discussion post:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Google&apos;s statement makes it clear that their main motivation for participating in affirmative action is to help them reach their own goals.
			They want to market their services worldwide, and having a diverse workforce gives them the perspective they need in order to better market to a wider audience.
			Additionally, they want intelligent people to help them create new products, and these intelligent people could be from any race.
		</p>
		<p>
			Google is not the kind of company that actually cares about people.
			They sell people&apos;s data for profit and hassle anyone that won&apos;t hand over the data that they sell.
			They demand personal information, such as telephone numbers, then make sure that you actually gave them yours by demanding that you verify it.
			What about those of us with no telephone service?
			Google gives us no option.
			It&apos;s very clear by Google&apos;s actions that Google isn&apos;t in business to help people or help the world.
			They&apos;re not interested in equal opportunity (people without telephone service don&apos;t even have an opportunity to create an account, let alone seek employment), they&apos;re not interested in improving society (they sell people&apos;s data for profit, which is bad for society and privacy), and I doubt that they care about past wrongs (seeing as they continue discriminating against non-telephone users and they continue selling people&apos;s data).
			As such, we can deduce that Google&apos;s only other possible motivator on the provided list is to reduce workforce tensions.
			It&apos;s less that they care about their own employees (though they may actually care about their own people), and more that reduced tensions will make their workplace more productive, which ties back into their main motivation of wanting to reach goals and make a profit.
		</p>
		<p>
			You ask whether improving society or being more effective in the marketplace is a better justification for affirmative action.
			Honestly, that depend on who you are.
			For me, I think improving society is the better argument.
			Businesses exist to serve society, not the other way around.
			And society, at least in my country, desperately needs improvement.
			However, if you ask a businessperson, they&apos;d likely say that being more effective in the marketplace is a better justification.
			They&apos;d likely have the opposite opinion as me, and think that society should be used to improve business.
			The values that one holds determine which they think is a better justification.
		</p>
		<p>
			Taxpayers fund some affirmative action endeavors while private investors fund others.
			Which is more ethical, you ask?
			It depends, again, on your values.
			Pretend that you&apos;re opposed to affirmative action.
			You&apos;re still having to help pay for it, as you&apos;re a taxpayer.
			Personally, I&apos;m not against affirmative action, but there are many government actions that I&apos;m having to pay for, yet I disagree with them.
			For example, I&apos;m opposed to the $a[NSA] spying on me, especially because I&apos;m one of the people funding them.
			Should I have to pay the $a[NSA] to spy on me?
			In other words, should I have to pay for a service that I am ethically <strong>*against*</strong>?
			If you&apos;re a racist or have some other reason that you don&apos;t like affirmative action, you might feel cheated that you&apos;re having to pay for it anyway.
			On the other hand, affirmative action improves society.
			With that in mind, should society be funding it?
			Affirmative action benefits business as well.
			So should businesses be funding it instead?
			From my view, neither is particularly more ethical than the other, and in fact, each acts as a failsafe for the other.
			For example, if new bills are passed and taxpayers are no longer funding affirmative action projects, at least businesses still will be.
			Likewise, if businesses decide to stop, at least the taxpayers will still be working on it.
			Additionally, with both groups funding affirmative action, affirmative action projects such as scholarships are getting more funding than if either alone tried to tackle the problem without the other.
			There are many cases such as this in which businesses and society can work together instead of against one another, and deeming one or the other as more ethical an endeavor is counterproductive.
		</p>
		<p>
			The veil of ignorance test is a thought experiment in which you imagine being assigned a random race.
			You don&apos;t know what race you&apos;ll be, so any discrimination is potentially for or against you.
			In theory, you&apos;d want an equal-opportunity environment to make sure that while there wouldn&apos;t be any chance of discrimination in your favor, at least there wouldn&apos;t be any chance of discrimination against you.
			In that light, Google&apos;s hiring practices seem to not necessarily hire fairly, though they provide opportunities for everyone.
			Google is looking for employees from a multitude of cultures.
			That means that if you belong to a highly-pervasive culture, you&apos;re competing with a much greater pool of candidates.
			However, if you&apos;re a part of a less-pervasive culture, your competition is diminished.
			Google probably still wants someone from your culture, but there&apos;re less people able to fill that role.
			As far as the veil of ignorance test goes, I&apos;d have to say that Google&apos;s hiring practices are unethical.
		</p>
		<p>
			However, while I think Google is a horrid, noxious, evil company, I don&apos;t honestly have a problem with their hiring practices.
			They fail the veil of ignorance test, but they do so with good reason.
			People of one culture legitimately have something to offer Google that people of another don&apos;t have.
			If Google weren&apos;t an evil company, these hiring practices and the products Google creates would be in a better position to improve the world for everyone.
			Instead, Google&apos;s products are put in a better position to do more harm because of these hiring practices, but it&apos;s other practices within the business that are responsible for this, not their hiring practices.
			(A few Google products actually do do good in the world, despite Google&apos;s bad intentions, but most if not all Google products could have a positive impact if not controlled by such an evil corporation.)
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		I had planned to finish all of the reading assignment before posting that, but due to having taken to long to complete the reading, I posted it as soon as I had read far enough to know what the veil of ignorance test is.
		As such, I came on a bit strong in favor of affirmative action.
		I hadn&apos;t yet read the arguments against it, and knew very little about it.
		All I really knew was that it was a set of policies to try to undo racism.
		My post is a bit accusatory in terms of those that would oppose affirmative action, but honestly, there are valid, non-racist reasons to oppose it.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
